Blogging Blue

While she doesn’t come out and say it directly, that’s the impression I get from reading a recent blog entry by State Senator Mary Lazich. Now while one can’t be completely sure if Senator Lazich wrote that blog entry - or if it was written by Kevin Fischer, her loyal aide - it’s curious that Senator Lazich would opine that Wal-Mart should run our health care system, considering the problems Wal-Mart has in running its own health care plan. Here’s just a few points about how well Wal-Mart has administered health care coverage for its employees:

• Wal-Mart reported in January 2006 that its health insurance only covers 43% of their 1.39 million employees, leaving over 775,000 employees without health insurance coverage.
• Wal-Mart doesn’t even cover as high a percentage of its employees as other large companies. On average for 2005, large companies (200 or more workers) cover approximately 66% of their employees, while Wal-Mart only covers 43%.
• Since the average full-time Wal-Mart employee earned $17,114 in 2005, he or she would have to spend between 7 and 25 percent of his or her income just to cover the premiums and medical deductibles, if electing for single coverage.
• Between 2000-2005, the cost of premiums rose 169 percent for single coverage and 117 percent for family coverage.

Now maybe I’m crazy, but that doesn’t sound like a health care plan I’d want to be a part of, nor does it sound like a health care plan that’s well administered. Then again, considering the generosity Wal-Mart has shown to Senator Lazich, I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised that she thinks Wal-Mart has done a great job of insuring its employees. If I were her, I wouldn’t want to anger my corporate benefactors either.

H/T to Greg over at Metro Milwaukee Today.

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According to a cost estimate by the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s Division of Executive Budget and Finance, the cost of health insurance coverage for autistic children whose parents already have insurance is about 10 million dollars.

That’s right, 10 million dollars is all it will take to make sure the therapy for each and every autistic child is ensured of being covered under their parents’ health insurance coverage. Now sure, 10 million dollars is a heck of a lot of money, especially considering our state’s current fiscal situation, but let’s put that 10 million dollars into perspective.

• Seven million dollars could get paper mill reopened in Park Falls, the largest community in the district of Republican Representative Mary Williams of Medford.
• Four million dollars could buy one - just one, no more than that - brand new soybean crusher for the district of Republican Representative Brett Davis of Oregon.

So sure, 10 million dollars is a lot of money, but so is the 11 million dollars in “persuasion” that some Assembly Republicans got in the last state budget. I know I’m biased, but if I had to choose between spending 10 million dollars on providing health insurance coverage to autistic children for the therapy they need or spending 11 million dollars on pet projects to get Republicans to vote for the state budget, I choose health insurance coverage for autistic children.

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That’s something I’ve been wondering about, in light of a recent editorial in the Fond du Lac Reporter by Paul W. Sylvester, president of the Concerned Citizens of Fond du Lac County. In his editorial, Sylvester seems to argue Wisconsin’s public employees are overcompensated - by way of the benefits they receive - especially in comparison to the benefits received by workers in the private sector. Sylvester notes, “state-local government employees in Wisconsin received an average of $12,171 in fringe benefits in 2005, exceeding benefits for private sector workers by more than 50 percent,” but what he doesn’t take into consideration the pay that state and local government employees receive - pay which often fails to keep pace with the private sector. In response to Paul Sylvester’s editorial, Marty Beil, the executive director of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, wrote an editorial of his own.

As the recent hostage situation at Waupun Correctional Institution demonstrates, the public employees who staff our correctional facilities face dangers in their workplace that most of us wouldn’t want to confront for any amount of money.

But Paul Sylvester’s Nov. 15 commentary isn’t concerned about the modest pay, short staffing and dangerous workplaces correctional employees face. He’s concerned only about parroting one-sided statistics peddled by the corporate-directed Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance, whose wealthy board members have a vested interest in maintaining the loopholes and special breaks they enjoy under Wisconsin’s skewed tax system.

In trumpeting the Alliance’s attack on public employee benefits, he leaves out an important part of the story. Looking at benefits in isolation doesn’t present anything close to an accurate picture. Like all working people, public employees are compensated by a mixture of salary and benefits.

For decades, most public employees have given up the potential for higher wages in exchange for maintaining health care that protects their families and retirement benefits that allow them to retire with the dignity they deserve.

Good people have been attracted to public service and have been willing to accept lower pay than they could have made in the private sector in exchange for a degree of stability.

Beil goes on to note the negative impact skyrocketing health care costs have had on the cost of benefits to state and local government workers, noting:

As one who has negotiated many contracts, I can tell you that the cost of supporting the health insurance bureaucracy is rapidly outpacing all other factors at the bargaining table. Public employees have been taking smaller and smaller cost-of-living increases (typically less than inflation) to offset the raging costs of health insurance.

It seems like anybody truly interested in saving money for taxpayers would be spending a lot of time and energy on pushing for a solution to the health care crisis.

Instead of blaming working people for simply trying to maintain decent coverage for their families, truly concerned citizens groups would be asking why Americans spend more money for health care than anybody else in the world.

Why do Americans pay far more but get statistically poorer outcomes than other industrial nations? Why do we pay more while leaving more than 47 million Americans with no coverage? Why are we willing to watch 30 cents of every health care dollar get gobbled up by a duplicative and inefficient health insurance bureaucracy?

The answer to those questions isn’t really that hard to find; one only needs look at our nation’s health insurance companies and their all-powerful lobbyists and trade groups to figure out why our health care system is as dysfunctional as it is. Too often, our elected officials are unwilling to confront the behemoths of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies that are profiting mightily from the current health care system. Instead, some would rather spew talking points about how health care reform will result in “socialized health care.” Ultimately, the answer to skyrocketing health insurance costs isn’t to try to take coverage away from those who still have it - the answer is to commit ourselves to finding ways to make health care more affordable and accessible for every American citizen.

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Shame on him for caving in and allowing mandatory health insurance coverage for autism treatment to be cut from the budget “compromise” reached late yesterday. It’s really a sad day when politicians are so readily willing to make treatment for autistic kids a political issue, and it’s a sad day when Democrats are so quick to give up on the issue just so they can say they got a budget deal done.

In a multi-billion dollar state budget, mandating insurance companies provide coverage for autism treatment would have cost 1.3 million dollars, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s money that couldn’t have been cut from somewhere else.

I’m actually disappointed I had faith in Governor Doyle and all his talk about helping autistic kids.

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Apparently so, according to those “compassionate conservatives” in Madison. Assembly Republicans have released a list of things that the Republican leadership sent out that they find objectionable in the Governor’s new budget, and included among the many objectionable items is this:

• Autism Insurance Mandate with $1.3 million in new spending to cover the cost of the new mandate in state health insurance program.

So in our state’s multi-billion dollar budget, Assembly Republicans find it objectionable to spend 1.3 million dollars to make sure the autistic children of folks who have state health insurance are provided with coverage - coverage that they don’t have right now. Now maybe it’s because I’m biased, given that I’m the parent of an autistic child, but I simply cannot comprehend how anyone with children would vote against providing health insurance coverage to children who didn’t choose to be born with a life-altering disorder like autism. As Michael Mathias over at Pundit Nation has pointed out, “now that Republicans in the House of Representatives, including Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, are vowing to block an expansion of the SCHIP program, it seems inescapable that poor, very sick children are simply fair game for the more extremist elements of the GOP.” What kind of world is it we live in when folks are willing to use children as pawns in a partisan game of chicken?

I’m absolutely disgusted at the lengths some lawmakers are willing to go to in order to score cheap political points in an attempt to pander to their base, and I refuse to stand idly by while Republicans attempt to punish autistic children and their families simply to save a few dollars. I’ve emailed Mark Honadel, my State Assemblyman, because he apparently doesn’t care too much about autistic kids, as he voted against Governor Doyle’s proposed budget. Perhaps those lawmakers who want to cut the autism mandate from the state budget should put a face to all those autistic children who’d suffer, but if they can’t, I’ll do it for them. This is my autistic son Nicholas…

Edit: This post is what happens when you blog while angry. I’ve received a letter from Mark Honadel, and my assertion that he doesn’t care was way off base. I know I’m oftentimes very passionate about the issues that matter most to me, and sometimes that quality can be a bad thing.

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